I am a long time, big time Devil May Cry fan. Played through and loved 1 and 4, could care less about 2, positively worship 3.
I've
been primarily against this game from moment one, but as more was
released, at the very least, I became open to seeing what was on the
plate before spitting on it and sending it back.
Now I've tried the appetizer. A.K.A the demo, for those not following the analogy. Here's what I thought.
Looking at it from a gameplay perspective:
The
game plays like a pretty solid action game, though the holding of the
triggers to switch between styles is annoying, and the shoulder mounted
roll buttons feel unnatural. The lack of dedicated lock on button is
also sorely missed. Despite my annoyances, the combat is still strong
enough to stand on it's own as an action title. The platforming is nice,
though nothing to scream home about. The sections where the world tries
to kill you have no sense of urgency, though. At no point did I feel I
had to hurry to avoid dying. This held true in combat as well. Even on
the harder difficulties, the demo holds little challenge, and enemies
move like trained circus animals, making them ridiculously easy to avoid
and toy with. The new Dante of DmC doesn't move as slowly as I thought
he would, but still feels a bit slower than the games of old, which is
slightly disappointing.
As a successor to the Devil May Cry
franchise, however, the gameplay feels somewhat... lacking. Now, I
understand that this is but a demo, so at some point I'll have to get
hands on the full moveset before I let this be set in stone for me, but
between the (currently) small movelist, slower paced combat, easier
enemies and an overall feeling of a lack of gameplay fluidity, the game
doesn't seem to be holding up. This goes double if your natural instinct
is to try and play as if this was DMC (capital M for differentiation) and not this newer, but
unfortunately not better edition. The playstyles simply don't mesh
beyond triangle to slash and square to shoot.
And from an aesthetic/overall feel standpoint:
The
game doesn't much remind me of a DMC game, but whatever feel the game
is trying to achieve that isn't a DMC game, it's doing well. Everything
about the in game world seems well thought out and planned to match the
overall grungy, dirty feel of the game, which is good. The menus and
little touches to the HUD and score meter portrayed as smudges and
splashes are somewhat nice, alongside the sickly color scheme of the
whole game. The game has moments of extremely minor slowdown during
shifts in viewpoint during a cutscene, which, while not a huge issue, is
somewhat marring.
New Dante himself feels like a cocky little
snot, but he also seems somewhat insecure, as if he's trying hard to be
this extra tough guy, since he doesn't know what the hell he is, which I
imagine was the intention, if this is in fact an origin and coming of
age story. It's not my favorite portrayal of that character type, and I
definitely don't like it as a portrayal of Dante, but that's more due to
enjoying Dante circa 3 and 4 so much. His old school unabashed
cheesiness went over better with me than this new false confidence tough
guy.
I sincerely dislike the way the demons are portrayed,
however. Visually, they are a stunning, grotesque sight, which is
totally cool. But they speak as if simple, crude humans. Now I don't
mind the simple, or the crude. It's the human that I mind. I would
assume there are demon language versions of the insults slung back and
forth between the boss character and Dante, but instead, she resorts to
simple human swearwords. I think that would have been much cooler if
Ninja Theory had created a demon vernacular with demon swear words to be
used in an equally crude fashion instead, separating the rock bottom
demons from the top rank, cool as a cucumber demon lords.
I also really just don't like the battle music.
I do, however, hope they expand significantly on the back story, or at
the very least, the story is paced far better than it is in the demo.
Because the whole thing seems like an aimless mess that's attempting to
be a sharp and gritty analogy for the world we live in. And failing in
most senses, coming across more as snooty and overbearing. Anvilicious,
even.
And that's pretty unfortunate, considering the overall idea
of the reboot is to try and establish it as a serious work of art as
opposed to a cheesy fun video game.
The most unfortunate part of
the whole thing is that it's attempting to carry the Devil May Cry name
without any of the Devil May Cry soul. That really brings the whole
shebang down for me.
All in all, I doubt very highly I'll be
purchasing this alternate Devil may Cry. If someone were to pick it up
for me, I'd probably give it a go, but I don't believe it's worth my
money.
(That was the most unbiased version of this demo review I could give. My inner fanboy screams with tightly bridled hatred and longing for vengeance against the fiends who have ruined my beloved series... But that's not important at the moment.)
Yep.
